The world would be a better place if Harry Potter's butterbeer and the BFG's
frobscottle existed - but we could perhaps do without the Pan Galactic
Gargle Blaster

We live in a world of pretty endless choice when it comes to drink - these days, just going into the milk aisle of a supermarket is enough to cause a panic attack (Cow? Soya? Goat?), while anyone who asks in a café for a plain coffee would probably be met with a blank stare.

But the drinks cabinet is far bigger, and more delightful, in literature - a world where wizards drink butterscotch-flavoured beer, and instead of mojitos, people sip "gargle blasters". Here, to mark World Book Day, are six of the best beverages in books.

Butterbeer

Top tipple: a butterbeer barrel at the Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, Florida (ALAMY)

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After a long day fighting He Who Must Not Be Named, most of us would probably crave a stiff drink. Being a conscientious young student, however, Harry Potter takes comfort in a foaming tankard of butterbeer: a sweet concoction that tastes "a little bit like less-sickly butterscotch” and which is so low in alcohol that it’s only really elves who get drunk on it. What a role model.

Frobscottle

Roald Dahl loved inventing ridiculous new words, especially when it came to food and drink. One of his best-loved characters, the BFG, lives on what sounds like a far-from nutritionally balanced diet of "snozzcumbers" and “frobscottle” – a fizzy drink in which the bubbles travel downwards, rather than up. This, young heroine Sophie soon learns, means lots of “whizzpops” – a concept that causes uncontrollable laughter in any child enjoying the book, and a sneaky grin on the face of any adult who remembers reading it.

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

At the opposite end of the spectrum to butterbeer is this alarmingly potent cocktail, which features in Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker's’s Guide to the Galaxy. Invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, it contains such eyebrow-raising ingredients as “Arcturan Mega-gin” and the tooth of an “Algolian Suntiger”, and tastes "like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon, wrapped round a large gold brick". Sounds like something students might like.

Moloko Plus

Potent: Alex, played by Malcolm McDowell, with a glass of Moloko Plus in the 1971 film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange (REX FEATURES)

There's no comestible that seems as innocent as milk, but in the grim world of Anthony Burgess‘s A Clockwork Orange, a glass of the white stuff tends to come spiked with drugs. This is what anti-hero Alex and his comrades drink before they embark on the spree of “ultraviolence" which lands him in prison.

Sploosh

In Louis Sachar’s young adult novel Holes, a troubled child runaway called Zero survives in the desert by living off jars of an unpleasant-looking liquid that he calls “sploosh". Little does he know that the jars are full of fermented preserved peaches, made over 100 years ago by the outlaw Katherine "Kissin Kate" Barlow.

Alice’s “drink me” bottle

When Lewis Caroll’s Alice ends up in Wonderland, she stumbles across a curious-looking drink that decrees “Drink me”. Despite the fact that it tastes like a mixture of "cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast", she drinks it eagerly, and suddenly shrinks. Luckily, there's a magical cake which might just help her...